Monday, June 23, 2008

The Dragon Hunt Begins Anew

I had a great writing week. I started working on the old manuscript of book two in earnest this past week. The working title is: The Dragon Hunters.

Due to the large amount of sales, the publisher, Five Star Books, wants to move up the release date of book two. It was going to come out in 2010. The book should be coming out in late 2009, but nothing is official. I don't have a contract, just word from the publisher and the editor. The details will be worked out later, probably in August when I meet my editor at World Con.

Keep in mind that I wrote the book in between 2000-2004. Most of it was done closer to the year 2000, but I've been working on it off and on for a long time. The manuscript started out around 119,000 words, that's about 450 "book" pages. The Golden Cord was 398 "book" pages (105,000 words). My goal is to cut this book down to around 105,000 words, maybe less. We'll see. I want it to be tight and very fast paced.

I can see that my old writing style can be tightened up quite a bit. The overall story arc isn't changing much, but the chapters are getting much better. I spent lots of time working on the first few, especially the first and second. They needed to be rewritten and refocused. I rewrote about 10,000 words this week, which means about six short chapters.

I think this book is going to kick serious ass. The story really gets rolling and the danger is so high. I'm really excited to be working on this project. It's fun to revisit the characters and now I'm better at rewriting, having done so several times before with The Golden Cord.

I've only got seven weeks before I meet my editor, so I've got to get cracking! I need to rewrite 16,000 words a week or more, which is a lot of pages. Probably, I'll end up keeping the manuscript longer so my alpha readers can take a crack at it. The good news is that I'll be working hard and immersing myself in the book.

I want to thank all of you who have read the first book and let me know what you liked. Many of you have encouraged me to get the second book ready and I'm going at it with a vengeance.

Thanks again for all of your support and please write a review of the book and post it online. Then let your friends know you liked it. I'd be happy to send you or your friends posters and bookmarks. Just let me know!

1 comment:

The Iron Dragon Series

About Me

Paul Genesse is the author of The Golden Cord, which is the bestselling fantasy novel Five Star Books has ever had. He is also the author of The Dragon Hunters, and The Secret Empire in his Iron Dragon Series. He loves writing short fiction and has sold over a dozen, which appear in various DAW anthologies, and elsewhere. He is also the editor of the five volumes in the demon-themed Crimson Pact shared multiverse anthology series. He lives with his very supportive wife, Tammy, and a large collection of fantasy art in his basement art gallery.
He worked full time as a cardiac nurse for 17 years, and as of October 2014 works as a clinical analyst for a large healthcare company. He has also worked as a copy editor, computer game consultant, and naturally he enjoys speaking at conventions, and doing school visits. He is a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, and loves The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movies. He wants to become the nerd Jimmy Fallon and enjoys interviewing movie and TV stars at large media conventions like Salt Lake Comic Con. Please friend him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @Paul_Genesse, explore paulgenesse.com and send him pictures of dragons.